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Concordia University students want probe of foreign-student recruiters

Concordia students staged a protest in Montreal Wednesday after some international students from China complained of mistreatment. (XI CHENG PHOTO)

By Nicholas KeungImmigration Reporter

Thu., Nov. 8, 2012

Concordia University students have asked Canada’s international education industry to probe the use of recruitment agents after foreign students there complained of substandard conditions in their home-stay arrangements.

“Some of them don’t get enough food. Their access to hot water and use of kitchen are restricted, and they can’t have visitors,” Nadine Atallah, vice-president of Concordia’s Undergraduate Students’ Association, said at a protest in Montreal this week.

“In one incident, a student was accused of stealing forks, knives and cups, and had to pay the landlord $150. After she paid, the landlord said more went missing and asked her for $1,240 or (to) get out.”

Nadia Hausfather, of the university’s Graduate Students’ Association, believes these are systemic problems that are growing as Canadian universities increasingly turn to recruitment agents to help them compete in the lucrative international education market.

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“We were shocked by their stories, but we were not surprised,” said Hausfather, because there is a “general negligence of the well-being of international students.”

Such concerns recently prompted the regulatory body that governs immigration consultants to issue an open letter to Canadian colleges and universities about using third-party recruiters.

“It has come to our attention that foreign students are often victims of abuse and improper advice. Either they are being coerced into purchasing airline tickets at a higher fee, or they are threatened and intimidated by agents,” wrote the Immigration Consultants of Canada Regulatory Council.

“We would encourage all Canadian institutions to be cautious of the type of practices their agents are engaged in.”

The home-stay issue at Concordia came to light when three Chinese students sought help from the university’s housing and job bank. Then came a damning article in the campus paper, The Link, detailing how a first-year finance major from China was “taken for a ride.”

The Chinese student told the paper that, for $900 a month, he shared a crowded home-stay with 12 other people, “where breakfast, lunch and dinner were two slices of bread — sometimes with margarine or a hot dog.”

Lydia Li, a first-year management student from Shanghai, told the Star she paid $900 a month to share a house with a family of three and two other students — one from China, the other from Mexico.

“There’s only a bed in the room, no chair or desk. We didn’t even have a lock on our doors. All we had were sandwiches with jam,” said Li, who moved out on her own in October.

“We don’t know where to complain. No one is taking responsibility and we feel betrayed by Concordia.”

However, Concordia spokesperson Christine Mota said no international students had complained to the administration about these issues.

In response to the campus article and inquiries from the student bodies, the university last month sent a letter to all 5,200 international students and asked them to contact the Dean of Students to share their experience.

Only two people responded, Mota said. But Li said international students fear repercussions and deportation if they speak out.

Mota said the administration plans to create virtual and on-site orientation sessions, in Mandarin, Arabic, Farsi and other languages, that will include information on housing and their rights as tenants. It will also make available a Mandarin version of the pre-departure guide for foreign students.

Mota stressed that Low, owner of the Vancouver-based Orchard Consultants Ltd., is not a Concordia employee, but a contractor who represents the school at international education fairs and marketing seminars. Low recruits exclusively for Concordia.

“Concordia has been helped considerably with external recruiting services and could not have had the same outreach in China and success without this support. Many major Canadian universities make use of external recruitment services,” Mota said.

“Orchard Consulting offers, independently of the university, the option of applying to live in a home-stay, which is a service that students contract for through (the company). Concordia neither receives, collects, remits nor pays any funds for this service.”

However, Li said she and other Chinese foreign students were under the impression that Low, the recruiter, was a Concordia employee because of his Concordia email address and the fact that they did not have to pay him an administrative fee for arranging the home-stay.

Both of Concordia’s student bodies have asked the Canadian Bureau for International Education to investigate whether Concordia has violated the body’s code of ethics.

In 2011, there were 240,000 international students in Canada. Some 67,052 of those were from China, the top source country.

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